Professor of Peking University: What role will the Middle East play in the era of drama?

Middle East, cradle of human civilization. The ancient Mesopotamian civilization and Egyptian civilization were born. The three major religions of Christianity, Islam and Jewish religions were bred, and the glory of the great empires such as the Arab Empire, the Persian Empire and the Ottoman Empire.

However, today, the Middle East is full of turmoil and war: religious conflicts and frequent war, the public protests one after another, terrorism is raging ...

Today, how can we look at the Middle East more objectively and neutralizing the root cause of the Middle East?

On September 4th, Teacher Wu Tao, a professor at the Department of History of Peking University, made a new book "From Baghdad to Istanbul" with you, tells the Middle East under the history of world history and global vision, and shared with readers who are writing this book. Feeling.

The following is a lecture record.

How to position "From Baghdad to Istanbul"?

In the Chinese reader circle, will people read a historical book related to the Middle East to understand the Middle East?

Basically, my experience is that most of the people who pay attention to the Middle East often stare at hot news or current events. In this regard, people do not choose to read books, but can read news and read various comments. This is a very interesting thing.

In the communication class related to the Middle East-Islam, I also listed some books to students, but I think that most people will not read these books seriously.

In fact, the book "From Baghdad to Istanbul" has a close relationship with the Middle East, but it is not that kind of special monograph. My book discusses the problem from a far and magnificent background. Not direct analysis.

For the Middle East history, it should be relatively simple; for ordinary readers, I am afraid it is not easy to find the entry point.

In my opinion, there are only two cases writing a book. The first is to tell everyone what I have studied and knows. The other is, I want to make things that I do n’t know but are particularly interested, and then tell the process of clarifying this.

My first book "Modern State and National Construction -Research on Turkish Nationalist Ethnicism in the 20th period" and the second book "From Baghdad to Istanbul" are exactly the first and second cases mentioned earlier.

And what is the starting point of the book "From Baghdad to Istanbul"?

On the one hand, many of the starting points of this book are the results of the real issue of the Middle East from a historical perspective in the process of about ten years. This kind of review is an exploration of common sense issues in itself. Because many things, I am the same as most people. Essence

In short, the starting point is your own ignorance.

In the Middle East, there are many countries, such a deep and diverse history and civilization, and there are too many things. So I especially want to know. In the process of understanding, it is not pure reading, but also tracks the development of reality. In this process, I wrote some small articles.

Many of these articles are related to issues such as "Spring of Arabia" and the so -called "Islamic State". Therefore, I jumped out of the development of Turkey to focus on Iran and Arab countries, including the basic situation of Syria, Iraq and Egypt. These are the basis of the book "From Baghdad to Istanbul".

Another one can be said to be the basis of the starting point. I also told "Islam and the modern world" in the classroom for a long time. Such a general class is a challenge. Short board.

Having said that, it is the result of my jumping out of the "comfort zone". I hope to combine and integrated the knowledge that I have written, related to reality, and the knowledge I learned and digested in order to prepare lessons. This is the general process of forming such a book.

The content it focuses on has spanned more than a thousand years, and it involves a number of contents such as politics, economy, history, culture, and religion. But even so, from the perspective of knowledge, there are still a lot of things that cannot be taken care of, it cannot be encyclopedia.

Middle East: the center of world civilization intersection

The Middle East is a relatively unique region in the history of the world, and it also produces the profound results of civilized convergence in human history.

In fact, understanding the history of the Middle East, you will see long -term intersection of race, religion and language.

For example, people usually think that Middle East Muslims are not much different.

If you look closely, you will find that although Iran is more east than Arabia and closer to China, Iran's language belongs to the Indo -European language, which is closer to those languages ​​in Europe. People no longer believe in worshiping fire and change to Islam. This is the result of multi -civilized convergence.

Similarly, the world's three major divine religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all appeared in the Middle East. For the contemporary world, Christians and Muslims increased more than half of the world population. Why these religions Will there be such a historic impact? In fact, this is also an important result of civilized communication and intersection.

Whether it is Iran, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, or Iraq, the result of civilization can be seen everywhere in the Middle East. This is of course an important reason for people's interest in the Middle East.

I was thinking that when we started to jump out of the perspective of Chinese civilization and East Asian civilization, we can say that the center of world civilization convergence should be in the Middle East. From the perspective of the Mediterranean region, the reason why Christian civilization and Islamic civilization are generated, including the modern European civilization we are talking about, it is nothing more than the result of continuous communication between the Middle East and European civilization.

Of course, because we are influenced by European centralism, it seems that Islamic civilization has no contribution to modern history, but of course, the actual situation is not like this.

Therefore, if you also want to jump out of your own knowledge and comfort zone, you must understand this world from multiple aspects and treat ourselves as parts of equality in this world. Looking at and discussing the distant civilized country equally, cultivating the initiative and motivation of jumping out of your comfort zone. Of course, your vision will be different in the end.

In the recommendation preface he wrote to me generously, Wu Sicke also said that if you want to learn about the basic situation of the Middle East from the perspective of practical work, such as diplomatic work, if you do n’t have a lot of time to do special research, there are still this book. Help is to sort out some clues, including the basic development of a country.

What role will the Middle East play in the era of drama?

Finally, it is about Turkey, which is actually my professional research field. This part of this part may be enough for a small book, with a little more than 100,000 words.

In the second month after the book "From Baghdad to Istanbul", I published a booklet in Peking University Publishing House- "Osman-Turkey's Discovery: History and Syriotic", which actually echoed in this book.

So if these two books are Turkey, they can echo.

The book "From Baghdad to Istanbul" is based on realistic problems, but most of them are cut in from a historical perspective. For example The Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453, the time to destroy the East Roman Empire.

At that time, the transformation of the Saint Sophia church began. This transformation is not only the purpose of religion, but also political purposes, which has a great impact. Until 1935, it was used as a mosque. From 1935-2020, it was used as a museum. By 2020, it was changed to a mosque. I talked about this clue. Clear.

This is a very important sensitive topic for Western Christian society and Turkish Muslim social relations. However, I did not discuss this issue simply from the perspective of Turkish contemporary diplomacy and internal affairs, but put it in the historical context of more than 500 years.

In addition, when discussing the Turkey's attempts to endure in 2016, I also looked at the perspective of the great history.

I discussed many Turkish issues in detail, not only because Turkey is my main business, but also because I think the development of Turkey can be called "model". There have been some changes in this model from the Kemal era, or there are transformations.

In the complex relations between Europe, Russia, and the United States, it also included in the Middle East at the time. In fact, Turkey has a great role. We can see more clearly today.

In the end, it is difficult for us to predict what will happen in the future. When I wrote this book at that time, when I was modified by the book, there was no problem with the Russian -Ukraine conflict, and I did not consider this problem at the time. I have made some simple introductions along the relationship between Turkey and the West and surroundings.

In addition to these practical issues, what does the Middle East have to do with our intellectual life?

As the relationship between China and the world is getting closer and closer, are we willing to go out of our comfort zone and pay attention to the distant areas far away from us? This is a very important aspect. Of course, the Middle East will continue to develop and change, which will of course affect our country and affect the daily life of each of us.

From a practical point of view, it is necessary to add a little bit of basic knowledge about this area.

But more importantly, it will help us increase the dimension of thinking about problems. For us, it is not only the relationship between China and the United States and the West. The more you need to pay attention to.

Through this book, what I am looking forward to is to help everyone open a horizons, not only observe others, but also deeply understand our own status in the world and our relationship with the world.

- END -